L5R – Card Spotlight : Sudden Blockade

A card that has gathered much shouts of gayness attention from players, it has been the subject of much controversy. Let’s breakdown this card’s strengths and weaknesses:

Gold cost to play
With the exception of Kalani’s Landing players, 3g usually means the difference between buying an extra holding/personality unless you screwed somewhere. Blocking an opponent’s key personality from entering play (assuming it has no abilities that can be used while out of play) for 3g for 1 turn will mean a difference to most military decks which hate being screwed by prefer not meet opposition. Defensive decks may use this card but i’ve noted that players would rather hasten towards their victory condition rather than stall.

Opportunity cost to play
It’s played on either player’s open phase barring the restriction on the card. If you play it on your opponent’s turn with personalities in play, chances are good that you’re going to pillage and rape attack his province on the next one for military decks. If you play it on yours… there had better be some damn good reason to.

Circumvention/Counters to this card
Hard counters come only one form: Bad Kharma. The odds of your opponent countering this card is requires your opponent to fulfill 2 conditions, 1)Dishonour centric deck 2)Make you lose honour below 0 fast enough for him to use it. I’d take my odds with meeting non-dishonour decks to be high enough to not worry about Bad Kharma. Circumvention is possible though with the easiest one to be any one of the moronicnot-so-efficient ways such as discarding the card in the affected province using say Unsettling Doubts + Duty of the Crab but i’m sure you get my point. In order words, you’ll need to perform a min of 2-card combos usually to circumvent if you’re hit by Sudden Blockade.

Game Impact
I’m sure there are times where DeathLady Luck decides to have fun with you and give you a single personality out of so many dynasty flips in those key turns. And coincidentally your opponent has Sudden Blockade too! The impact of not being able to bring out key personalities can mean a very fast scoop. Especially if he decides to recycle it via Jurojin’s Blessing etc. 3G for 1 less personality to defend/attack/perform seems cheap in comparison suddenly, depending on the number of provinces you have left and personalities you have in play.

Conclusion
This is a card that playtesters must have smoked weed while riding Unicorns probably did not do much playtesting before releasing it. True, not everyone will be playing it due to lack of spare slots in the Fate side and/or gold but when a card has only one hard counter, i’d be rushing to plug 3 in my deck if it were possible unless suddenly Faceless decks comes back in fashion.